In a certain factory where food products are prepared and exported to all parts of the world there may be seen an instance of that monotonous labor which is so marked and terrible a feature of mass production under modern industrial methods. It consists in knocking the top off an egg. The eggs are delivered by machinery on to a table behind which stands a row of women knocking off the tops. One woman has done it for thirty years.

This is an image of human life at the extreme stage of futility. It gives the beholder thoughts that are far from consoling. He may remember, for example, that food products from that factory are sometimes to be found on his own table, making him an accomplice to the monotony of that woman's life, a party to its futility, and to that extent responsible for it.

Dickens has drawn a similar picture on another plane. In Our Mutual Friend a person is introduced named Mr. Podsnap. Mr. Podsnap is the caricature of a purse-proud and pompous Englishman - perhaps Dickens's finest caricature, enormously exaggerated, of course, but yet true in the groundwork of it. He has an office in the city and a fine house in the West End of London;

VOL. 134-NO. 6

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and his whole life resolves itself into a simple movement, like that of a pendulum, endlessly repeated, between his house and his office. Here is the ultimate formula of Podsnap's existence as Dickens presents it: rise at eight; close shave at a quarter past; breakfast at nine; to the city at ten; home again at half-past five; dinner at seven. That is the programme for the day; and the programme for the year is to repeat it so many hundred times. As with the egg-breaker so here the total impression is of sheer futility. Getting down to fundamentals there is not much to choose between thirty years of Podsnap's programme and thirty years of the egg-breaker's.

There is an American novel which yields the same impression, whether designedly or not I do not know. No American novel of recent times has been more widely read in England than Babbitt. It has interested us for many reasons, not least because it deals with certain moral conditions which are common to both sides of the Atlantic. The background of that story, it will be remembered, is the life of a large and prosperous city of rapid growth, where all the mechanical apparatus of civilization is running at high pressure. If

you look at that life in detail, if you take the personalities and the actions one by one, you would say that nothing could be less monotonous. It is like a kaleidoscope where all is restless change and shifting scenery, no two moments alike, no person the copy of another. But if you look at it all, not in detail, but in the grand outlines of it, in the totality of what it is, then it strikes you as always the same, not moving to any assignable goal, but endlessly repeating itself, endlessly revolving round the same centre, a completely vicious circle, which, when once you get into, you can never get out of, try as you may. There is poor Babbitt himself, a most pathetic figure. You see him caught in the revolution, vainly struggling from time to time to strike out an independent course, but always falling back into the senseless round from nowhere to nowhere. All that happens in the way of change is the continual acceleration of the pace; the whirl goes faster and faster, which only renders the people who are in it the more powerless to get out of it. This is a very truthful picture of hundreds of cities all over the world and perhaps of industrial civilization in general- the life of the egg-breaker writ large, the life of Podsnap expanded to a social phenomenon.

A similar thought crosses the mind when watching the innumerable motorcars which throng the streets. Each separate car is clearly going somewhere, but the totality of the cars appears to be going nowhere just moving, as a fermentation moves. You can assign a definite destination to the single car but not to the totality.

So too in a great assembly when three or four hundred people are talking all at once. Each separate speaker is saying something significant to his neighbor, but the totality of the voices is a meaningless roar, a big noise in

which the very form of human language is lost. The parts mean something, the whole-nothing.

The same phenomenon on a still larger scale is presented by human progress in general, or at least by a wellknown version of it. There is a way of presenting human progress which reduces it to the endless self-repetition, under different terms, of the same identical formula, a movement from nothing to nothing, a Podsnap-programme writ large over the face of the centuries. Mr. Bertrand Russell is not so far as I know a believer in that doctrine, but there are chapters in the Prospects of Industrial Civilization which leave the impression of an appalling monotony in the history of mankind. In one of his chapters he speculates, with his usual brilliance, on the various regroupings of the nations, the readjustments of political and economic power that the future is likely to bring forth a chapter that should interest Americans because, in Mr. Russell's vision of the future, they invariably get the best of it.

But from the point of view of mankind it makes no difference who gets the best of it, the Americans or anybody else, because the new situation, created by these apparent changes, is nothing but the old situation with the factors of it transposed. It is like an equation in algebra in which the quantities on either side can be put on the other side by simply changing plus into minus and minus into plus, but without making any difference to the significance of the equation as a whole, which always yields the same result, namely, that x=0. According to Mr. Russell the two main forces which determine the distribution of power among nations are cupidity and fear; in every rearrangement of power this formula repeats itself; the final arrangement, like the present one,

being only the last thing which cupidity and fear have been able to accomplish. The changes that go on are kaleidoscopic in their detail, but viewed synoptically the whole operation is perfectly meaningless, like the egg-breaker's life, like Podsnap's programme, like Babbitt's environment. In a world ruled permanently by cupidity and fear it makes no atom of difference whether we live now, or whether we live a thousand years from now; whether the Americans get the best of it, or the Chinese. At all stages of the process the total values are the same. The equation grows ever more complicated, until no sheet is big enough to contain all the terms of it. But beneath this vast complication of terms and figures a truth lies hidden that is exactly the same as it was when the equation stood in its simplest form, the truth, namely, that x=0, - the equation of the egg-breaker, of Podsnap, and of Babbitt, of the motorcars, and of the roar of voices.

Π

We have followed this idea into a wide field from the egg-breaker to the history of civilization. But a further extension awaits us. We can expand the theme to the cosmic scale. There are philosophies both ancient and modern which regard the evolution of the entire universe as a meaningless process of self-repetition, -a vicious circle that moves from nothing to nothing and embraces all created things, the doom of the whole creation groaning and travailing together in the boredom of endless monotony. 'Alike among the pessimistic religions of India, the teachings of Heraclitus and Plato concerning the shadow side of our existence, the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche about the eternal cycles, we encounter the same theme

over and over again: the entire secular process is an everlasting repetition the totality of which yields nothing new.' So writes the late Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy: it is a line of thought that seems to have a peculiar attraction for the Russian mind. Troubetzkoy goes on to quote an instance from Dostoievsky's great novel, The Brothers. The Devil is speaking to one of the brothers. "You are always thinking of the earth as it exists to-day,' says the Devil. 'Well, let me tell you that the earth as it exists to-day has been repeated millions of times in the past; each time it perished, disintegrated, turned into dust, and decomposed; after that a fresh nebula was formed, then a comet, a new solar system, a new earth. The whole of this evolution has been repeated times without end, always precisely in the same manner down to the minutest details. One is bored to death to think of it.'

In these words, which are rightly placed in the mouth of the Devil, we sound the lowest depths of pessimism. The entire cosmic process has now reduced itself to the everlasting equation that x=0. When all has been accomplished that can be undertaken, when the system of nature has exhausted its possibilities, when evolution has reached its goal, when all conceivable perfectibilities have been attained, when the dream of an Earthly Paradise has been fulfilled, when the causes have triumphed for which heroes fight and martyrs suffer and lovers break their hearts - all must perish and begin again, repeating the process to the minutest detail, only to perish in like manner when its course is run, and so on forever and ever. Not a tear has been shed but must be shed again, not a drop of blood has been spilt but must be spilt again, not a heart broken but must break again, and again, and again, through endless

eternity, whenever the remorseless cycle returns to the point where that drop of blood was spilt, where that tear was shed, where that heart was broken before. Well may the Devil say it bores one to death to think of it.

For Death is the keynote of the entire process, as well as of the reactions it provokes in us. In contemplating a futility so dreadful our very souls seem to expire. It is not only we that die but the whole cosmos of which we are the infinitesimal parts and for no end save that it may live and die again. Death has dominion over it all. The equation of our life is the equation of all existence. Disguised under the immense complexity of the phenomena that confront us, hidden by phraseology which has perhaps been contrived for the express purpose of hiding it, lies the formula, embedded in the very structure of things, that x=0.

A Moment's Halt- a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reached
The Nothing it set out from. Oh, make
haste!

It will rightly be said that this intolerable philosophy, familiar as it was in the ancient world, and still is in the East, is not and never can be the creed of the energetic Western nations. And yet I venture to think that even in these 'practical' times, with their discoveries, adventures, exploitations, and noisy successes, there does arise in us from time to time a dim but disturbing suspicion, a haunting halfthought, that the whole enterprise on which we are engaged is futile. It is the inarticulate voice of that 'deeper self which lives in the presence of Death.' Mr. Bertrand Russell, for example, who is an eager reformer, keenly conscious of certain ends that are worth striving for, has his moments of profound depression when, as he

himself confesses, he would welcome the advent of a kindly comet to put an end to the antics of man on the planet. I do not know how the mind of America stands in this matter; but in England I observe this: that while very few people will acknowledge themselves pessimists, most people will listen with interest to the philosophy of pessimism as though they found in it an echo of something in their own minds, an echo, perhaps, of that 'deeper self which lives in the presence of Death.'

We believe, as I suppose Americans do, that civilization is moving to an end that is really worth while, accepting it pretty much as a matter of faith. But when we are asked to define the end, to say what it is, most of us are at a loss; and our inability to define the end sometimes causes a passing doubt as to whether there is any end at all. With us, as with Americans, life is full of excitements and distractions; and our misgivings, if we have any, are easily drowned. Like the Americans, we have little time for meditating on Death and Eternity and little inclination to do so. Besides all which, we live in an atmosphere deeply influenced by Christian tradition. And that makes a great difference even to those persons who have ceased to be conscious adherents of any form of Christianity. In all Christian countries there is a rumor abroad that Death, and all the frustrations from Death, have been overcome; that the vicious circle of existence has somehow been broken at that point; that a way of deliverance has been found from the meaningless whirlpool of self-repetition; and that men therefore may go on living their lives as though Death did n't count. I say there is a vague rumor to that effect; not a positive solution of the problem consciously grasped, but a reminiscence of the fact that Someone, somewhere, has broken the circle. It belongs to

the atmosphere we are breathing, this tradition that the Challenge of Death has been successfully met and answered. What grounds are there for such a belief?

In the first place I must explain that the Challenge of Death presents itself to my mind as the summary challenge which the Higher Powers lay at the feet of man. It is the spear-point of the Challenge of Life, not to be evaded on any terms, as the fashion now is with many to evade it. To find a good in life which is worth achieving in spite of the fact, consciously realized, that this visible scene on which we operate, and we, the visible agents who operate within it, will presently be gathered to the dark death-kingdoms and enfolded in the bosom of the everlasting Silence

that is the spear-point of the Challenge, the acid test of philosophy, the point where philosophy must either pass into religion or retire, beaten, from the field. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed,' says Saint Paul, 'is death.' The last-and the most formidable. All other enemies may have been overcome: poverty, misery, crime, injustice, whatever ills beset the path of man from the cradle to the grave; but so long as there is nothing but a grave at the end, not for the individual alone but for the whole system to which it belongs, what does it all amount to? This raising of richer harvests for Death to reap, which is all your secular progress can boast of, this fattening of victims for the universal sacrifice, which is all your philanthropy can achieve — is that the triumph of man? Does the victim feel his doom the lighter because, up to the moment of his immolation, he has been well fed? And what difference does it make if you feed his mind as well as his body? Take Socrates at the moment of his final extinction, and what is the difference between him and the vilest of mankind,

except it be that the death of the villain is a good riddance and the death of Socrates an irreparable loss? And so with the human race as a whole. Whatever satisfaction may be felt as we watch the ascent of man on one side of the mountain, through all the stages of rising value, to the apex of the Earthly Paradise, is it not all wiped out as we contemplate the inevitable return-journey which brings him back stage by stage to the starting-point and then engulfs him in Universal Death? For every plus on the one side there is a minus on the other, and the end of the equation, as before, is that x=0.

If this were the conclusion of the whole matter the blackest pessimism would be left in possession of the field of thought and the human race might curse the day when it was born.

III

To what purpose, the reader will be asking, has a line of inquiry been pursued which leads to a result so disastrous? I have pursued it for this reason: it is only by frankly facing the disaster, by measuring it to the full extent, by extenuating nothing of its significance, that we are able to grasp the scope and the majesty of the means which religion brings to the

rescue.

Religion is being presented to the world to-day in forms which are quite inadequate to the problem it has to solve, which belittle religion into a mere reënforcement, often a slight reënforcement, of the powers of man in fighting the battle of his temporal interests; as, for example, when we define it as morality touched with emotion, the emotion being the slight reënforcement brought on to the battlefield. Religion is infinitely greater than that. It is the power that faces the Challenge of Life when it comes to its spear-point in